Cisco engages with stakeholders in three primary ways: industry group stakeholder engagement, third-party facilitated individual interviews or convened groups, and ongoing conversations with established stakeholders.
Through these engagements, Cisco aims to gain perspective and insight regarding our corporate citizenship performance, specifically:
- To learn more about how Cisco’s current corporate citizenship is perceived and where the company could be more transparent or change current practice
- To get forward-looking information from stakeholders with particular subject-matter expertise, industry knowledge, or insight into our lines of business and specified growth areas
- To provide Cisco leadership with a chance to listen to different perspectives and build ongoing relationships with key influencers
The feedback from recent stakeholder engagements indicates that our stakeholders believe Cisco has made progress in areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Stakeholders view Cisco as a leader in CSR, as evidenced by our participation in the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC) and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), for example. In addition, stakeholders view Cisco as transparent, accessible, and a strong performer, and they feel our participation in external groups is broad-ranging.
For the future, our stakeholders look to Cisco to provide more nuanced data and metrics in support of our CSR activities, as well as to anticipate trends and continue to play a leadership role in addressing emerging CSR issues.
Identified Issues
In addition to asking for feedback on Cisco’s CSR performance, we actively solicit feedback on important emerging issues. The following issues were identified as most pressing:
- Individual rights to privacy, and how Cisco’s products and services fit into that debate
- Data security and the development of technology solutions to address security
- Internet censorship and freedom of expression
- Cisco’s position on Internet neutrality
- Cisco’s CSR and corporate governance, particularly our internal implementation of policies
- China’s policies toward the Internet
- Information on the management systems in place to place to meet our CSR goals
- Incentives for employees (and executives in particular) to meet our CSR goals and targets
- Political contributions
Cisco’s 2006 report addressed stakeholder concerns for net neutrality, human rights, and privacy. This year we will address questions related to our responsible risk management, the relationships within our value chain, and our investigation of concerns raised by stakeholders concerning human rights and freedom of expression, and accessibility of the Internet, particularly in China
Issues Spotlight: Human Rights, Freedom of Expression, and China
We maintain a specific corporate policy on human rights and other codes and policies addressing human rights for our employees and suppliers. With regard to our product and the indirect customers of our products:
- Cisco does not customize, or develop specialized or unique filtering capabilities, in order to enable different regimes to block access to information.
- Cisco sells the same equipment in China as it sells worldwide.
- Cisco is not a service or content provider or network manager.
- Cisco has no access to information about individual users of the Internet.
Issues Spotlight: Political Contributions
Cisco does not donate corporate money to political candidates or parties. Cisco has a political action committee (PAC) funded voluntarily by employees. All information on the Cisco PAC is readily available by accessing the Federal Election Commission Website
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